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Here’s number 7: our supermodel issue, fashionably late and even thinner than you expected. We hope you enjoy it and stay in touch with us on Twitter and Facebook to see what we have lined up for the next few issues.

Ok, issue number 7 is queued up and ready to go so we’ve decided to take a short break while we pass the editorial duties over to someone else for issue number 8. To make it interesting we’re opening it up to all of you; anyone who thinks they’d like to try their hand at editing a literary publication is free to apply. If you would like to be considered please send us an email sketching out why you want to edit an issue of the Burning Bush 2 and, equally important, why we should let you!

Things you might like to know:

1. We hope to have the issue out in February 2015.2. We’re open to discussing themed issues or special features.3. We’ll look at all applications received before November 16th 2014.4. All queries to [email protected]

In the penultimate interview of this series, we talk to poet Christodoulos Makris.

How long have you been writing?With various intentions, from a very young age. A sustained engagement with the act of writing as an artistic discipline began in early 1997. Since then it’s been constantly shifting in terms of intensity and motivation, as well as form and approach.

What was your first publication?A report on a school sports event for a national newspaper when I was about 10… In poetry, it was either a short piece in west47, Galway Arts Centre’s now defunct (& seemingly vanished without trace) online literary magazine, or two poems in my own translation into Greek for the Nicosia-based journal Άνευ. Both around the same time in 2004. A first collection, the chapbook Round the Clock, came out in 2009.

What have been the most significant developments, negative and positive if you like, in poetry in Ireland over the last 10 years or so?Without a doubt the grassroots movement in spoken word / performance poetry. In the general absence of radical poetics, this is where a welcome challenge to some longstanding hierarchies, and to a monolithic understanding of what poetry can do and be, is coming from.

What do you think needs to happen, and what would you like to see happen, in Irish poetry over the next few years?I’m wondering whether the shortcomings we perceive don’t in fact form a necessary part of the conditions that each of us responds to or even writes against. For me these include: the closed, inward-looking environments (territorial, linguistic, formal) pervading the vast majority of the poetry written/published here – also contributing to a stale critical culture; the scarcity of outlets (whether in terms of regular events or publications) encouraging the development of material that’s of its time, with the hybrids and fusions in form, content and medium that this implies; the almost nonexistent exploration of conceptual writing strategies and ideas of process; and so on.

We often hear in Ireland of the pull from either Boston or Berlin: broadly speaking, are Irish writers European writers in the English language or wholly steeped in the Anglosphere?I find the notion of a unified writing community that works within some imagined collective mode hard to accept. A rather alarming notion, in fact.Finally, if you had to recommend one regular poetry event in Ireland to someone, what would it be?Wurm im Apfel: after a year’s absence the worm is returning to reoccupy Dublin’s poetry apple. Judging by the poets it introduced to audiences here in the past (derekbeaulieu, Jaap Blonk etc) we’re in for a renewed treat!

Christodoulos Makris was born in Nicosia and has lived in Manchester, London and since 2001 in Dublin. His collections include Spitting Out the Mother Tongue (Wurm Press, 2011) and the artist’s book Muses Walk (2012). He also made the short film Safe as Houses (2013). http://yesbutisitpoetry.blogspot.com. Tw: @c_makris

The final interview in the series is, fittingly enough, with poet, critic & founder editor of the original Burning Bush magazine, Michael S. Begnal.

How long have you been writing?I started writing song lyrics in my teens, and not-very-good poetry in my late teens up to around age twenty. So maybe it’s better to ask when I started writing good (or at least readable) poetry, and I would say that would be from age twenty-one on. I am presently forty-seven.

What was your first publication?It was a poem in an American journal called Endless Mountains Review in 1988 or ’89.

What have been the most significant developments, negative and positive if you like, in poetry in Ireland over the last ten years or so?Well, it’s been almost ten years since the last Burning Bush print edition (Spring 2004). I’d like to think that TBB played some small role in opening up the Irish scene to new or different modes of poetry than what had been the norm for all intents and purposes up to that point. Of course there were other things going on. I think the publication of Trevor Joyce’s with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold (New Writers Press / Shearsman) in 2001 was a signal event, in that it was perhaps the first “experimental” collection to gain notice on a wider scale at that time. Michael Smith’s editorship of Poetry Ireland Review was also a big deal. He brought to public view some very important poets who had not had such a platform for a long time, along with new poets who might otherwise not have appeared there either. So, Joe Woods (former Director of Poetry Ireland) handing PIR over to Smith in 2002 was extremely significant. Wild Honey Press began in the late 1990s I think, and they continue to publish some really great stuff. I know I’m leaving out many people who have contributed positively to Irish poetry in recent years, but I would say that anyone who does something — puts out a book, a pamphlet, organizes a reading, takes a critical stand in an essay or review perhaps — without necessarily waiting for outside support or government funding — all of this stuff matters.

What do you think needs to happen, and what would you like to see happen, in Irish poetry over the next few years?Following on from my previous comment, I think people just need to do what they want to do. It’s great to have a publisher, for example, and believe me, I’m very thankful to have one – but if you don’t have one, or maybe perhaps as a prelude to getting one, there’s nothing wrong with forming a collective of sorts and putting out your own stuff, for your own circle, and perhaps in the process of sending that out it will get notice. It would be ideal to have Arts Council funding for your journal or project, but you don’t have to give up if you don’t have that. Poets existed for hundreds, thousands of years, with or without official support. If you want to write, write. It’s great that the Arts Council exists and that the state even supports the arts at all, but if you don’t have funding, you just do it anyway, somehow. Bear in mind that I am not talking about vanity publishing. I’m talking about a group of writers getting together on a grassroots level to make something happen. And who knows where that will lead. Also, number two, people need to understand that coming down on a side in poetry and making an argument for it is a good thing. It doesn’t mean you ought to be insulting or disrespectful, but making a case for your position is a part of life, in my view. Don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but aesthetics is something that is contested and necessarily lends itself to debate.

We often hear in Ireland about the pull of either Boston or Berlin: are we European writers in the English language or are we wholly steeped in the Anglosphere?I don’t think it’s an either/or situation. What’s wrong with an Irish writer identifying as an Irish writer? It’s tough enough trying to figure out what that means. That said, since English is the majority language in Ireland, it’s a given that both American and other English-language poetries are easily available to Irish poets. Nothing wrong with that. There’s great poetry to be found everywhere, if you look hard enough. In regard to language, Continental poets are a bit further away for most, though I know that Ireland in general identifies with Europe far more than, say, England does. Of course, translation more or less obviates that difficulty, and I know some Irish poets who would strenuously assert their interest in French, Russian, Spanish, or Italian poetry. A further way to look at the question, instead of positing two outside poles, is to consider additionally the native Gaelic tradition, which is extremely rich, and the whole body of contemporary Irish-language poetry. Irish poets can draw on that too. But whatever it is that gets you going, you don’t necessarily have to categorise yourself as one thing or the other. We can draw on all sorts of influences and still be Irish, or (also in my case) American, or European, or just ourselves. “Irish” can mean many things, and it does.

What was the best or most memorable reading you’ve attended?There are any number of great readings I’ve seen at festivals like Cúirt or reading series wherever, in Ireland and America both. But I’m going to go back to a more local Galway history and say that the open-mic nights at the now long-defunct café Apostasy in the late 90s were memorable for reasons I suppose I’ve just mentioned earlier. While a lot of it was mind-numbingly bad, which you’ll have at any open-mic night, it provided a platform that allowed a grouping of sorts to come together and work some things out — our own poems in progress on the one hand, and larger questions on the other, for those who were serious anyway, like what next?

Michael S. Begnal has published four collections of poetry; his most recent is Future Blues, (Salmon Poetry, 2012). His poems, essays and reviews have appeared internationally in numerous journals and anthologies, in print and electronically. He blogs at www.mikebegnal.blogspot.com

Continuing our interviews this Friday lunchtime with some of the writers who have contributed to the Burning Bush 2, we have award winning Irish poet Afric McGlinchey.

How long have you been writing?I’ve been writing sporadically since my teens. When I returned to Ireland in 1999, I started attending workshops at the Munster Literary Centre, and that increased my commitment. But it became an obsession after I did a six month Faber Academy course in 2010!

What was your first publication?It was The lucky star of hidden things, a poetry collection, published by Salmon in 2012.

What have been the most significant developments, negative and positive if you like, in poetry in Ireland over the last 10 years or so?From a positive point of view, the increase in the number of open mic venues has helped enormously in creating the sense of a poetry community, as well as the opportunity to try out your work, and develop confidence in delivery. Also there are several new journals, both in print and online. But as we’re a small country, there’s the danger of a lack of diversity. There’s also been a leap in the number of competitions on offer, so there’s more opportunity to win or be shortlisted, but it’s possibly of less value now, as they’re so common. And the rise in cost of entry fees is unwarranted and very off-putting in certain competitions. Then there’s the proliferation of MA and M.Phil degree in creative writing, which might raise the bar in terms of quality of writing, but might also add to the homogeneity of work coming out of Ireland.

What do you think needs to happen, and what would you like to see happen, in Irish poetry over the next few years?Anonymous submissions to journals would be great, to avoid cronyism, or bios influencing decisions. We have a lot of festivals, but I’d still like to see more poetry discussions and academic talks rather than writers merely reading from their new books. I think that would add an exciting dimension. But prices for festival tickets need to go down. €18 per event is simply too expensive. I’d also like to see more of a gender balance in the work published. In fact, we need more female editors too.

One positive direction I’ve noticed is working towards making poetry more visible to the general public – for example, in shop windows (Pól O’Colmain organized this during the poetry marathon in Skibbereen). I’d love to see more of this: at bus shelters, in banks, hospitals, on trains etc. I also think the page poets and the performance poets could learn from each other. I like Christodoulos Makris’s Vice Versa initiative, where poets are paired to read each other’s work. And I loved Dimitra X’s Poetry Series. These are great innovations.

Boston or Berlin: are we European writers in the English language or are we wholly steeped in the Anglosphere?From where I’m standing, we appear to be steeped in the Anglosphere, unfortunately. I think it would be very exciting if there were more incentives for engagement with European poets, translation exchanges etc. I’ve been selected as one of seven writers going to Italy next year on an Italo-Irish literary exchange, something that the Irish Writers’ Centre was instrumental in setting up, along with their Italian counterparts, and I think that’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Finally, if you had to recommend one regular poetry event in Ireland to someone, what would it be?Cork’s O’Bhéal, of course! But not only because I’m biased – I’ve heard many guest readers from all over Ireland and abroad say that it is the best venue they’ve visited. And I’ve read at many venues myself, in Ireland and in England, and it’s a hard one to beat for atmosphere, the welcome, and attentive listening.

Afric McGlinchey grew up in Ireland and Africa. She is a workshop facilitator, editor and reviewer and tutors poetry online at www.africmcglinchey.com. Her debut collection, The lucky star of hidden things, was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry. She won the Hennessy Award for Emerging Poetry in 2011 and the Northern Liberties Poetry Prize (USA) in 2012. She lives in West Cork.

Review: Exteroceptive (Wild Honey Press, 2013)by Sarah Hayden

I first began reading Wild Honey Press chapbooks (pamphlets) back around the year 2000, when I reviewed some for a print issue of the old Burning Bush. (One such essay was reproduced on the Wild Honey website and can be read here.) This small press, published by Randolph Healy, is one of Ireland’s (and the world’s) most interesting and innovative presses, and I’ve continued to read many of its poets since then. So it is fitting, I think, and certainly a pleasant task for me to review one of the latest Wild Honey publications, Sarah Hayden’s Exteroceptive.

This 29-page, hand-stitched collection contains some of the most remarkable poetry I’ve read in a while, actually. The title, which I’ll admit I had to look up, means “pertaining to exteroceptors, the stimuli acting upon them, or the nerve impulses initiated by them” (exteroceptor: “any sensory organ or part of the body, such as the eye, able to receive stimuli from outside the body”). Thus, Hayden purports to examine through poetry the workings of the senses. However, the senses can be deceived, and perhaps more to the point here, deranged. Hayden is more interested in simulating exteroceptive disruption, through language use, than straight-forward, “accurate” description/imagery, which quickly becomes obvious in the first section of “Optic”: “this exhibit has been removed from view / but pulses still in its tang in a high-chem vibrato”. That the “exhibit has been removed from view” in a poem titled after the sense of sight should clue the reader in that his/her expectations ought to be left at the door. A little further on in this poem, the speaker notes, “my eyes itch”. “Optic” ends with two beautifully hallucinatory sections, the latter of which employs unconventional typography and a heavy dose of parataxis.

The next poem, “Auditory”, engages in some interesting soundplay, including rhyme and alliteration, foregrounding the poet’s ear for language. Then, almost contradictory to its own title (though then again perhaps not), shifts into some remarkable visual images. For example:

Itching up against each other

shifting

calf tendons taut

from boot to boot

they are

a herd of twitching deer. . . .

Even here, though, there is a conciseness in diction and sound that makes this scene sing. Then we find “A double-membraned egg” that “is thick / but sensate / perversely mapped with hot / wet nerves”, which is ultimately seen “hissing in foul puddles.” At this point (if not before), the astute reader notices a heavy-duty Surrealist influence on Hayden’s work, and then sure enough, in the poem “[Proprio]”, there is an allusion to André Breton (with the name “BRETON” appearing in block caps). The poem “Olfactory” seems to faintly echo James Joyce with its portmanteaux and especially resembles Finnegans Wake chapter II.2 in the use of cryptic footnotes. Joyce is not exactly a Surrealist, of course, but theWake does deal with the subconsciousness. Remember that Surrealism does not mean just any old thing that is bizarre or unexpected. It is instead defined by Breton in his 1924Manifesto of Surrealism as “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” (Breton further elaborates: “If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them — first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason.”)

I happen to love Breton and Joyce, as well as Mina Loy, who could also be a touchstone here, and it is good to see a contemporary poet picking up where they left off. But Hayden has her own concerns and speaks to her own contemporary moment — in one clever aside, she refers to herself as “the artist autophagically cheerleading / signing her hyper-alliterative aphasia from the acropolis of the last-ever occupy camp”. “[Proprio]” is something of an artistic manifesto, in which such depictions of “the artist” appear in different forms throughout. Also notable is “the artist as an unsentimental collector. remember this as she truffles through your waste / paper”. The enjambment here puts something of an emphasis on the word “waste”, and it reminded me of a scene in the 2008 documentary film The Examined Life (by Astra Taylor) where Slavoj Žižek walks through a garbage dump asserting that garbage is in fact the perfect metaphor for the contemporary world. (As Arthur Vafin interprets this scene, “The waste deposit is an example of how man escapes from garbage, in a wider sense — from the thing one is most afraid of. It seems as though the thrown out garbage disappears from our world. However, it disappears only from the world of illusions, but still exists in reality” [International Journal of Žižek Studies 6.1]). What Hayden’s poetry suggests is that we need to see our world as it really is, even if it means that it is a decadent world, and even if therefore we approach it through sense perspectives that are themselves skewed or compromised. On the one hand, she seems to say, we must artistically embrace the world as “waste” even while, on the other, we must highlight, respond to, and oppose the financial and other forms of corruption that led to the Occupy movement.

The final three pieces in this collection, “Olfactory”, “Haptic” and “Hypogeusic”, therefore further the sense of decay and confusion posited in the first half: “This is the smell that blinds” reads a line in “Olfactory”. In “Haptic”, with its “vegetal reek”, there is the image of

scoliotic youths loung[ing]

among the wider branches jaded panthers

feeling themselves

there

more aptly aligned

they sigh hotly, abrading petulant mouths

“Hypogeusic” describes a landscape of “leaf litter and curdled splatter” and “rusted pools”. A dream, our reality in some way, or both? It is not just in her images, however, that Hayden embraces decay, but in her language as well. Like many progressive contemporary poets, she is of course aware of the mediated nature of language, and so there are lines like “phonemes coagulate / whole sentences compose themselves in a slow ear”. But I also find her individual word choices to be quite interesting. Throughout this chapbook she utilizes “flowery” and/or Latinate words, not only in her titles but all over the body of her poems: “infructuate”, “excrescence”, “indexicality”, “vitrine” “osteoporitic”, “automata”, “agglutinative”, “farinaceous”, etc. There is a view held by some English-language poets, often put forward as the conventional wisdom of writing poetry, that such diction is “weak” and therefore undesirable and decadent, and that basic Anglo-Saxon words are “strong” and therefore better. Hayden deliberately turns this notion on its head and thereby suggests, rightly I think, that the English language in itself is decadent, sullied and mixed up, and that therefore a good writer can do whatever the hell s/he wants in it, if s/he can pull it off. In Exteroceptive, Hayden pulls it off.

Eamonn Wall was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, in 1955, and raised there. He attended college in Ireland and the US and received a Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York-Graduate Center in 1992. He has taught at a number of American Universities including Creighton University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis where he is professor of International Studies and English. He is the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University for 2014.

Wall has published six collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry, most recently Sailing Lake Mareotis (2011). A volume of New and Selected Poems will appear this year. His prose books are Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (Notre Dame, 2011) and From the Sin-e Café to the Black Hills: Notes on the New Irish (Wisconsin 2000). At present, he is working on a study of contemporary Irish-American writers and Irish Writers in America. In 2013, Arlen House published two volumes of James Liddy’s essays that he edited: On American Literature and Diasporas and On Irish Literature and Identities. Eamonn Wall lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with his wife Drucilla Wall, also a published poet and prose writer, and they have two grown-up children. A co-founder of the Scallta Media publishing and production initiative in Co. Wexford, Eamonn Wall manages to spend two or three months of each year in Ireland—in Wexford and Galway.

David Gardiner: How long have you been writing and how did you come to it?

Eamonn Wall: I began writing short stories as a teenager and then explored poetry writing. Though I published some poetry during my college and post-college years in Ireland—thanks to the encouragement of James Liddy and others associated with the Gorey Arts Festival in Co. Wexford—I did not become serious about writing in a dedicated way until my late-twenties. Coming to the US in 1982 took me out of my comfort zone and spurred me on. Also, my experience broadened so I matured, I think, and found new material and direction. Before coming to the US, I was a voracious reader and an occasional writer. Living in the US, I began to think of myself as a writer, as someone who would learn the craft, and push on. The poetry that appeals the most to me, and from which I have learned so much, is the more open-form verse favoured by American writers such as James Wright, William Stafford, Adrienne Rich, and others. I have great regard for Eavan Boland’s poetry and prose, in her Irish and American contexts, and for Derek Mahon’s, Paul Muldoon’s, Greg Delanty’s—all poets with deep roots in both Ireland and the US. Also in America, I discovered immigrant writing—Bernard Malmud’s stories in particular—and this set me off in a direction of tracing and exploring aspects of the Irish-American tradition and how it relates to Ireland and to other diasporas. Of the Irish-American poets, among whom I number myself and from whom I have learned a great deal, I would start with Terence Winch, Nathalie Anderson, and Daniel Tobin—all poets whose work has energized me over the years.

DG: When was your work first published?

EW: My first publication was a poem that appeared in Vexilium, the annual literary magazine published at Cistercian College, Roscrea where I spent three years as a boarder. Both the poem and the magazine are safely filed away somewhere. As a college student and after, I had poems published in some magazines and in the annuals published by the Gorey Arts Centre in the 1970s; however, at that time, I was much more interested in reading poetry and fiction than writing it. Looking back, I would think that at the time I had didn’t have much to write about or out of. I’ve never been interested in poetry for poetry’s sake, for wry cleverness and nothing else in writing, so I needed to experience something deeper of the world to be able to write seriously. In this respect, being in America helped me greatly. It also unhinged me and opened me up. Also, as a post-grad student in the US, I was forced to work and think in a more disciplined manner than I was used to. I learned how to concentrate and observe better as a reader and writer, how to revise work, and to reach for higher standards. Dyckman-200th Street, published in 1994, my first collection of poetry was my first publication in a real sense. I was almost forty by them so it took me a while to find my way, or I was a slow learner, or both!

DG: In your 2011 study you wrote that you “have found West of Ireland writers share much with their American counterparts. Moreover, it is clear to me that some of the theoretical approaches that have been developed for the study of literature of the American West will be of great use to scholars of the West of Ireland” (xiii). Are there current, past or canonical Irish or American poets that you see sharing that intercontinental divide?

EW: What I set out to do in Writing the Irish West was to look at writers from the West of Ireland, who wrote about this part of Ireland, and compare and contrast their work with Western American writers. The four poets I chose for the book were Mary O’Malley, Moya Cannon, Richard Murphy, and Seán Lysaght and I was able to demonstrate, I think, close kinship between Irish and American poets and literary parallels—between the Irish dinnseanchas and American Place Studies, for example. I found, too, in Gary Snyder’s work many of the same concerns about heritage that one will find in Moya Cannon’s poetry. Also, Snyder and Lysaght share an interest in science and incorporate it into their work and both look at the world through the lens of deep time—a time that is measured in thousands and millions of years rather than in decades and centuries.

A great deal of Western American Literature is urban, reflecting the explosive growth of such cities as Phoenix and Las Vegas and this is also true in Ireland. Galway has experienced huge growth, or suffered as a result of it as many writers have pointed out, and is, like San Francisco, a thriving literary city. From the past, we can pair Robinson Jeffers and Yeats in quite precise terms. The former’s Tor House in Carmel modeled on Yeats’ Thoor Ballylee. In addition to these poets, I also wrote on the work of prose writers (Tim Robinson and John McGahern) and Martin McDonagh’s plays. Both Wests share “Westerness” though I don’t think I was able to define what this is in any stable way though I did try. But, the reader might be able to do so after reading Writing the Irish West from the clues I’ve provided.

DG: Ultimately, the world is where you find it and you’ve been most articulate about the landscapes of poetry. You’ve reflected that you are “interested in exploring connections between parts of different countries rather than between nations. Both writing and ecology are local activities that are internationally dispersed” (xiii). Are there ways in which you see your investigation of the Great Plains of the US and your own native Wexford as similar? Or are these different planets altogether?

EW: I have been a latecomer to ecopoetics and ecocriticism. I became immersed in these ideas through my readings of Western American Literature. In addition to the overarching green issues that are important and the tools that both ecopoetics and ecocriticism provide for writing poetry and writing about books, I have been greatly helped by ecology’s focus on the local.

As an immigrant in the US and an emigrant from Ireland, I have always felt separated from the larger narratives of both. I have citizenship in both countries though, at some level, I belong to neither. My loyalties as a writer are to smaller units, to the parts rather than the whole. This division may well be artificial though it is one that provides me with a space for thought and action.

In poetry, one can bring the Great Plains and the Wexford strawberry fields together imaginatively. I have been formed by a variety of places and there are in free play in my psyche. My loyalties to place are multiple and complex though I think that this is something that is shared by many people today.

DG: Your writing – both poetry and about poetry — is both human and humane. You’ve written that “literary and moral imaginations have been formed by interactions with place, space and a natural world that exists in free play with the human.” Just cause I’m a friend and, like you, Rory Gallagher fan of riffing…anything you have to say about that?

EW: Two obvious formative elements for me have been books and place. I have read steadily since childhood and been molded both by the books I have read and, at some deep level, by the process of reading itself which allows, simultaneously, for separation from and engagement with the world. Reading has always provided me with a sense of security, has always be able to transport me to a safe place.

As a child, I could be unhappy at school, at the CBS, so I was lucky to be able to retreat into warm and secure places—the family home and books—and these sustained me, and they do still. Since childhood, I have enjoyed Enniscorthy—where I grew up—for its rivers, hills, streets, old buildings, cathedrals and churches, its walks, and conversation. And, equally, for the warmth and personality of its people because a place is always about people too. (Though my relationship to Enniscorthy is also complicated, I suppose, because I left at fourteen and have not returned except on visits, some extended.) To a great degree, I still live in an Enniscorthy of the 1950s and 1960s and this is not the Enniscorthy of the present. I have great friends in Enniscorthy still, of long duration, and I look forward to returning to be among friends and family, in situations where you don’t have to explain anything about yourself.

My initial space was an Irish one and the next space that become important was the space of the American West which I encountered while living in Nebraska and traveling west from Omaha over a period of eight years. Over time, I have written a good deal of poetry and prose about both Enniscorthy and the American West.

Going back to your question about Rory Gallagher and riffing, I’d say that part of what I do is blend and mix and shuffle place so that in a poem or essay Albuquerque and Enniscorthy, for example, are brought together imaginatively. The American West— New Mexico, South Dakota, Colorado, in particular—belong to my dreamscape, both waking and sleeping. I like to keep my poetry fairly straightforward, though with edges and swerves, and work through narrative in the fashion of Stafford or Wright, and to use, pretty often, a convincing but unreliable first person narration. I think that being in the American West with its vistas and spaces taught me the need for clarity in poetry.

Place and space can be great teachers. Gallagher’s influences were as American as mine as I learned when I wrote the article on him that you published in An Sionnach. Immigrants can’t be purists. I have written a great deal about the immigrant experience in the US and the American West and both are gifts given to me by America, I think. These are stories that needed to be told and I took them on. I wanted to represent for readers what it felt like to be an immigrant parent in New York and in Nebraska. Eavan Boland’s work helped me greatly in this pursuit—the idea that you could both parent and poet and vice versa.

DG: Can you talk a little, perhaps, about some significant developments, negative and positive if you like, you’ve noticed in poetry in Ireland over the last 10 years or so?

EW: For the past ten years or so, I have been involved in Scallta Media (www.scallta.com) with Paul O’Reilly and Niall Wall (my brother). It is an initiative to publish, produce, record, and distribute work by Co. Wexford writers and artists. From this involvement, I have observed how much good writing is being done at a grassroots level. I have learned how strong writing is outside of the urban centres. I notice, too, that writing is accepted more as a legitimate activity than it used to be when I was growing up. People are more relaxed about the arts. Nationally, there are many good festivals where Irish audiences and writers get to hear good work from home and abroad. Living at a distance from Ireland for most of the year, while at the same time thinking of myself as an Irish poet, I am able to avoid the negatives while often being unaware of it. I enjoy meeting with Irish poets, hearing what they have to say, and reading their books. The Irish poetry scene is lively and I appreciate that.

DG: Finally, what do you think needs to happen, and what would you like to see happen, in Irish poetry over the next few years?

EW: I hope that the map of Irish poetry will continue to broaden. That different styles of writing will be accepted as being valid and important, that the new immigrants settling into the Ireland will be afforded their own voices as writers and be listened to, that people in the Irish poetry community will begin to better understand their connections to writers of the diaspora. Though there is always a great deal of talk about Irish emigrants in Ireland, especially around St. Patrick’s Day, there is scant regard in Irish poetry for the immigrant voice. Whether this voice is coming from Scotland, Argentina or the US, it not likely to be welcomed in Ireland. There is a silence that needs to be addressed. Though “The Gathering” in 2013 was interesting in many ways, its purpose was to bring people of Irish heritage to Ireland to spend money and bolster the economy rather to incorporate emigrants’ stories and lives into a larger narrative. I can’t recall poetry readings that brought poets from the Irish diaspora home to read and discuss their work. A missed opportunity!

Issue 6 of the Burning Bush 2 is online now and can be downloaded here. We know it’s a little late but, as modest as we are, we think it’s been worth waiting for: new work from John W. Sexton, Laura Cleary, Nessa O’Mahony, Derek Coyle & Dylan Brennan to name a few; the editor of the original Burning Bush, Michael S. Begnal, reviews new collections from Sarah Hayden and Billy Ramsell; and, in the first of a new series, David Gardiner gets the skinny from American poet & critic Daniel Tobin.

The Burning Bush 2 has moved to a new domain over in .org land. Issue #6 is on the way and features new work from Kevin Higgins, Donna Sorensen, Nessa O’Mahony, John W. Sexton and many others. Watch this space.